John Spratt: “You said the key point when you said it didn't have to happen. In the year 2001 when President Bush first took office…”

“You said the key point when you said it didn't have to happen. In the year 2001 when President Bush first took office, we proposed at that time, since we had a surplus for the first time in 30 years, to take the surplus in Social Security and use it only to buy down or buy up outstanding Treasury debt. That way we would have added to the net national savings of the United States, which is woefully deficient. We would have added to the capital availability in the United States and driven down to some extent the cost of capital. And by the year 2020, 2022 when the baby boomers began retiring in big numbers, Treasury would have seen much of its debt held by the public paid off. Now I am not so naive as to think that we would have religiously stuck with that proposal, but that is what the Blue Dogs were pushing and that is what many of us were pushing under the corny name 'lockbox,' but it had a serious, substantive idea beneath it, namely that we would increase the net national savings and we would at the same time clear up much of the debt owed by Treasury so that when the Social Security claimants came and presented their claims in 2020 and 2022 in large numbers, Treasury would be more solvent to meet those claims and less in need of borrowing in order to satisfy those claims. That was a potential, very potential. The Bush administration came to our committee, you were on it at that time, and said we don't need to do that.”